Once in a Hundred
by Second Wolf
Summary: Raaling is the first male Gerudo born after Ganondorf's failed insurrection against Hyrule. Destined to be the leader of his people, Raaling finds himself embroiled in a campaign to prevent the revival of the Goddess of the Sand. Yet every action has consequences, and as the years pass, the troubled prince finds that no good deed done for his people will go unpunished.
1. Prologue: His Own People

Flesh and blood did not equate to sand and leather.

For a ten-year-old, Prince Raaling's knuckles, elbows and knees were plenty hardened and calloused. One day he would lead the Gerudo people of the desert as their king. In a region with days as punishing as its nights, livid and boiling when the sun was high but cold and unforgiving when it vanished, dunes populated by gigantic arachnids and venomous serpents, Raaling could not afford to be soft and pampered like so many of the other kings he'd heard of. No knights to fight his battles. No lavish feasts when there was every chance another well would dry up and plunge his people into thirst and illness. Raaling would be the warrior king of the warrior people.

He saw the hesitation in his opponent's eyes, the only thing that allowed his own hesitation to linger without costing him his life. He ducked under the Gerudo woman's swinging arm, using his considerably smaller size to his advantage, then rammed his shoulder into her sternum and swept his leg into the back of her calf. She stumbled, flaming red hair swaying around her face, but remained upright. His attempt to zip by her in her moment of weakness faltered as she easily resumed her footing and hooked an arm around him, lifting him from the floor.

Raaling could strike a leather bag filled with sand until it nearly threatened to explode from its chain hanging from the ceiling, but the flesh and blood of his own people was different. It moved and pulsed and bled, rising and falling with his enemy's breathing, each strike accompanied by a puff of released air or a cry of pain. From the woman his station said he was supposed to be protecting. He'd trained with plenty of his fellow Gerudo, thrown people around and been thrown around, but they'd always stood up, brushed themselves off, and bowed as a sign of common respect.

There was no common respect in this fight. Raaling wanted the woman out of his way. She wanted him caught and imprisoned. Or worse.

He took a deep breath as the woman locked her arms around him, pinning him to her torso. She had his arms trapped, and there was little his comparatively small legs could do. He had only one recourse, a trick he was still figuring out. He'd only learned it less than an hour ago.

Their grunts of pain and exertion reverberated through the amber stone hall, oddly luminescent despite the lack of ambient light. Statues of beautiful women were built into the walls, slightly eroded from time, but the architecture was still remarkable. Beautiful, skillful and terrifying. Everywhere he looked, Raaling saw someone else who looked like she might want to kill him.

The Spirit Temple was as haunting as it was alluring.

He closed his eyes, willing himself to forget about the eroded faces, the war with his own people in the Spirit Temple, and the strong arms trapping him. He tried to remember what the witches had told him, something about picturing three circles in the dark and watching them grow, then linking them into the shape of a clover...three leaf or four leaf? Did it matter?

He went with three leaf. Raaling opened his eyes, and something like tiny plumes of black smoke, thick and billowing, flared over his fingers. He pressed his fingers against his assailant's abdomen, and she yelped and immediately loosened her grip, causing him to tumble to the stone floor. He chanced a look back and noticed a black mark expanding on her bronzed stomach, like fire blackening paper.

He swallowed, backing up in case she overcame her fear and charged him again. The witches had said it was like giving someone a temporary tattoo, enough to burn and encumber but not enough to seriously wound. The Gerudo woman clutched at the growing mark, her yelp turning into a scream through her teeth.

Raaling didn't stop to see what the end result would have been. His mother was the fiercest Gerudo alive and Avera was a strong soldier, but on their own they couldn't survive for long. He didn't have time to tie a pretty, peaceable bow on every confrontation. He took off back down the hall, sweat beading on his boyish face.

He had to find the witches. Without them Avera and his mother were dead women, and if these particular Gerudo didn't decide they were all better off without a Boy of Prophecy, Raaling could only look forward to a life of being a political pawn constantly looking over his shoulder. At best.

Feminine screams echoed throughout the Spirit Temple, some choked in pain, others in anger. None of the horrible screams of agony came from his mother or Avera, but they became trapped in his mind, like the endless statues he passed by were filling his head with madness.

He rounded the corner, seeing a staircase. He needed to go up. The Inner Statue of the Goddess was up. Somewhere. Glancing back to make sure he wasn't being followed, he rushed to the stairs.

And then immediately screeched to a halt as another figure came down the stairs, this one brandishing a polearm. Raaling didn't recognize her, and therefore she was an enemy. Her yellow eyes widened the same way all the other Gerudo's had, the expression reflecting the unfamiliarity and surprise they no doubt felt inside at seeing the only male Gerudo in the entire race.

She bore many of the same characteristics Raaling himself did, common elements of their people: bronzed skin forged in the desert sun, fiery red hair, yellow eyes, a slightly elongated nose, ears rounded rather than pointed like the Hylians in the east. Her loose, baggy purple attire and an open midriff would serve her better in the heat, not as much in combat.

However, she and the sorceress who now seemed to run this temple doubtless hadn't been expecting a soldier, as well as a mercenary and her ten-year-old son, to step in and say hello.

At first glance, Raaling didn't look too different from any other ten-year-old Gerudo girl, but word had already gotten around that the five-foot monkey running around the temple was the Boy of Prophecy, and everyone had a reaction to a living legend. His face was the shape of a heart, his eyes the shape of almonds, irises golden and hair the color of the setting sun, long enough to be tied into a tiny ponytail at the nape of his neck but long since pulled free in all the chaos. The sleeveless red tank top and loose white pants had once been fresh, clean and whole, but were now ripped, stained with sand and blood. The blood wasn't his.

Raaling stared at the Gerudo warrior in fear. The paltry magic the witches had taught him had little use if his target wasn't standing right beside him without moving. If only he hadn't lost his scimitar in that monster's belly.

To his surprise, the warrior loosened her stance a little, her polearm gravitating closer to the floor. She never dropped her guard, but the killer instinct he'd briefly seen in her eyes before they'd found his had vanished. To raise arms against the Boy of Prophecy wasn't a feat to be ignored.

"Are you unarmed?" the warrior asked.

Raaling's response caught in his throat. Would he keep her guessing? Try to win her over?

It hardly mattered. Something hard collided with the back of her head, ricocheting and lodging between the shoulder and back wall of one of the statues. It looked like a cooking pot. The warrior grunted, twitched, and collapsed to the floor, her polearm clattering loudly on the stone.

A different Gerudo stood in her spot, glistening with sweat, chest heaving in exhaustion. Her face was soft and rounded, her hair cut short and sticking to her face. A fresh cut dripped from her left cheek. Raaling felt a weight lift from his shoulders. They weren't out of the proverbial snake pit yet, but two stood a better chance than one.

Avera leaned against the right wall, exhaling in relief, a bloody scimitar hanging by her side. "Thank goodness. With that thing slithering around here, I thought you might have..."

Raaling shook his head, trotting to her side. His heart continued to slam against his ribcage, but seeing Avera's comforting face, flecked with blood though it was, brought some measure of control back to his nerves. "I'm okay. I haven't seen it."

Avera pried herself from the wall and briefly wrapped him into a tight embrace, muttering something into his hair he didn't make sense of, though he swore he heard the terms "your mother" and "kill me." She turned and headed back up the stairs, blade poised to strike if anything surprised them. Raaling knelt to pick up the warrior's spear, but finding it a solid foot taller than him and heavier than his little arms could carry, he gave up on the attempt and settled for a knife from her belt. He ignored the warrior's pained groans as he followed Avera up the stairs.

"Where's mom?" Raaling asked, trying his best to stay in Avera's shadow.

Avera paused before responding, reaching the final step and checking their surroundings for attackers. "Last I saw, still throwing down with the sorceress."

"Who has the upper hand?"

Avera swallowed. "I don't know."

They'd emerged into a larger hallway, the ceiling stretching twenty feet into the air. More light filtered in here, indicating they'd reached the ground floor with more windows to the outside world. Something rumbled throughout the temple, like a roaring fireball or a clap of thunder, shaking the foundations and knocking the dust from the ceiling.

If things were still exploding in the temple, that meant they hadn't killed Raaling's mother yet. It wasn't too late.

Raaling was thoroughly turned around. He looked nervously up at Avera. "Which way to the statue?"

Avera scanned the hall, eyes raking over the torches and murals adorning the walls. She gestured to a wide opening on their left with her blade. "That way. Hopefully. Follow the booms, right?"

The last Raaling had seen of his mother, she'd been battling the sorceress on a platform near the top of the Inner Statue of the Goddess. If they followed the sounds of war, they would surely find her.

They started forward, only for the sound of something heavy and leathery sliding across the floor to stop them.

It was barely perceptible to untrained ears, but Raaling and Avera knew better. He'd heard the same kind of sound every time a snake charmer had wowed spectators with her control over a cobra, watching it slither around and perform various tricks, utterly silent save for the hiss of its scales rubbing against the ground.

This was that same sound, only from something far, far bigger. It was hunting Raaling, and now it had found him.

Avera's eyes analyzed every inch of the hall within seconds. She spotted a hole near the base of the wall on their left, likely once used to transport some form of goods, now in disrepair. Too big for the famously tall Gerudo to enter, small enough for a child. Pointing to it, she hissed, "In there! Now!"

Raaling started toward it, but his legs wouldn't carry him all the way, his eyes transfixed on Avera. "What about you?"

Her mouth narrowed into a hard line as the sound of sliding scales on stone drew closer. She inclined her head further to the right, where the wall stopped and led into a series of stone columns. "I'll be all right. Go!"

His mother could perhaps fight it. Raaling and Avera, never, not even working together, not even with the special tricks the witches had shown him. Trying to suppress the hammering of his heart and the lump in his throat, he scurried into the hole in the wall, promptly disappearing from prying eyes. Before he went far, he shimmied onto his back and angled himself just well enough to see back out.

Avera ducked behind one of the pillars, scimitar held tightly in hand. She leaned back out just enough to stare Raaling in the eyes. Her eyebrows turned up in the middle, the desperation solidifying in her face as she mouthed, " _Go!_ "

Raaling's breath caught. How could she survive? Snakes didn't rely on their eyes. They _tasted_ their prey on the air.

A dark, winding shadow fell over the floor between them. The sound of scales on stone grew louder.

For a few breath-stealing seconds, the light from the hall ceased to be as something black, scaly and shiny blocked Raaling's view. He needed only kick his leg out and his foot would connect with the beast. He couldn't see Avera or the ornate murals along the walls. Just the moving lump of black.

The massive form stopped. Raaling held his breath, waiting for it to continue, or for Avera's scream to herald her death. Several seconds of this hell passed.

Then the form shifted, and something new entered the opening Raaling had squeezed himself into. Its head was shaped like a triangle, the glowing yellow lines like runes around its red, slit eyes indicating its otherworldly origins. The gigantic viper inched closer to his boot, a purple tongue the length of his arm flicking the walls of the small tunnel. It pulled away slightly, its maw opening grotesquely to hiss and spray him with saliva, revealing four fangs dripping with venom and capable of piercing all the way to the other side of his body.

Raaling clumsily tried to push himself back, holding his knife at length in case it could chase him into the passage. Its head looked too big, but if he was wrong...

The giant serpent buckled as Avera leaped onto it from behind, grabbing onto its flaring nostrils with her left hand, scimitar raised to strike downward in her right. The snake thrashed, causing her blade to miss its eye and glance off a fang harmlessly.

"Run!" she shouted, pressing herself against the triangular head to avoid being thrown. "Save the witches!"

Raaling couldn't leave her. Neither could he save her.

" _Go!_ "

Desperation fueling his limbs, he flipped back over and crawled through the passage as quickly as the tight surroundings would allow. The snake continued to screech and writhe behind him, Avera clinging to its thick, tough hide.

Raaling scraped his elbows along the floors, drawing blood, barely paying any attention to his wounds. Wasted seconds could spell death for any of them.

He pulled himself out the other side and flung himself back onto his feet, stumbling into a run. This room was the largest by far, nearly a hundred feet to the ceiling and two hundred from one end of the room to the other. There were stairways leading upward from all four corners of the room, all ending in observation platforms of the room's main attraction: the Inner Statue of the Goddess, a recreation of the fabled Goddess of the Sand once so revered by the ancient Gerudo, stretching nearly to the ceiling. The goddess's face was benign, eyes either closed or eroded over time, the crown of her head that of a cobra, her massive stone hands open and spread wide as if receiving an offering. Her legs allegedly were underground, a being rising from the sand, the ruler of the desert. Before her was a pedestal surrounded by lit torches, the ceremonial place of offering.

Something else exploded high above him, bathing the upper half of the gargantuan room in fiery light, causing him to stumble once more. He couldn't save his mother on his own, but the witches...

He spotted something glowing on the base of the goddess statue across the room – a rune, shining like the lines on the serpent, yet all different colors. A seal to temporarily hold magical beings, transporting them to some unknown space for an indeterminate time.

Raaling dashed across the room, crossing the pedestal in two bounds and slamming into the huge statue. He ran a hand over the rune, feeling it hum and vibrate at his touch.

A voice echoed in his mind, high-pitched, shriveled and older than Raaling dared guess. "Cute boy! I knew you would return!"

A second voice echoed, identical to the first yet from a different source. "Yes indeed! And _I_ knew it more!"

" _You_ certainly did not," the first voice sneered, "and _you_ owe me five sapphires as soon as the boy springs us!"

"Five?! You said three!"

"Inflation's a devil, isn't it?"

" _You're_ a devil!"

Raaling tapped his palm anxiously against the rune, his body humming with unspent energy. "Please stop. How do I free you?"

The two voices stopped bickering and easily fell back into sobriety. "Oh, well that's easy," one of them said, though Raaling found it impossible to tell which witch was which. "The trite runes of silly girls playing with sparks and embers can't hold us for long. We've been weakening the seal ever since we got blindsided."

"Should only take another hour or so," the other witch added.

Raaling blanched. Avera was wrestling a giant snake, and despite the witch's casual dismissal, his mother was not merely confronting a silly girl playing with sparks and embers.

"But luckily," one of them continued, "you can expedite our freedom. You remember the redirection trick we showed you, yes?"

Raaling glanced over his shoulder. No one was coming for him, but he didn't know how much time he had left. "Yeah. I use that?"

"Well, reign in your trusty steed, prince," a witch corrected, seemingly unconcerned with the war threatening the whole desert. "You can't just redirect any old energy you want, or we could all explode. The goddess might be unhappy with the hole we leave in her statue."

"If you disperse the right colors in the right order," the other explained as if teaching a small child math and not how to save his people from certain death, "you can weaken the seal until it snaps, and then we pop out and we... _get serious._ But if you do it wrong, the seal will come back stronger, and we'll probably explode anyway."

Raaling backed up and wiped the sweat off his upper lip, hands trembling. One small mistake was all it would take. He barely knew how to use any of their magic, and now they effectively wanted him to defuse a bomb with it. He eyed the colorful rune, a glowing prism of interconnected lines and letters. "Okay. Okay. Which one do I redirect?"

"The red one," a witch said without pause. "It's _always_ the red one."

"My sister is a moron," the other witch cut in a little too calmly. "Red would only work if it's a waning moon on a warm desert night and your name starts with an S. You want the yellow one."

Raaling touched two fingers to a circular yellow line slipping beneath a complex red symbol and a blue curve, his breathing shallow and ragged. "So this one?"

"No!" the first witch howled. "My idiot sister has forgotten to factor in the planet's rotation again!"

"So red?" Raaling squeaked, his fingers sliding to the symbol on top.

"Don't be ridiculous!"

" _Stop,_ " another voice ordered.

Raaling whirled on the source, standing a short distance away. The sorceress was almost as tall as his mother, six feet and some change, though not as built, draped in a flowing purple robe that had once been silky and beautiful but was now torn and burned. She was bleeding from her left shoulder and right calf, her long red hair cascading freely down her back. Raaling's mother was nowhere to be seen.

The boy extended the knife toward her, though he knew she could easily turn him into charcoal from across the room. "You're not going to bring the goddess back," he threatened, though his threat held no weight.

He would have handled her outrage better. He would have been far more understanding if she'd extended a hand to burn him in flames or cursed his supposed altruism. What hit him far harder was the pain and _betrayal_ he saw in her eyes. She shook her head so subtly he almost missed it. "You're young," she began, her voice little more than a whisper.

Raaling's temper flared as she struck a nerve. "Don't _you_ sell me that too."

She continued regardless. "One day we'll be your people as well. I don't want to raise my hand against the Boy of Prophecy. I don't. But you want what's best for the Gerudo, don't you?"

His mother and Avera had already told him all about why harnessing the Goddess of the Sand's power was a horrifying notion, _especially_ for the Gerudo. This sorceress wasn't about to get inside his mind.

"Stand down," the sorceress commanded, eyes filled with pleading. "Please."

"Red line," one of the witches whispered behind him.

Raaling didn't move. He was out of options.

It was either a trick of the light, or the sorceress had tears in her eyes. She inhaled deeply, steeling herself, and raised a hand toward him. "I'm sorry, child. Goodbye."

Sparks flared from the sorceress's fingertips, and Raaling's world lit up with lightning.


	2. Chapter 1: Paradigm Shift

_**Eleven years ago**_

* * *

Rasmura's howls of agony turned Avera's insides to pudding. Avera rested her chin on her hands, leaning forward while sitting on the ground, finger tapping restlessly against her closed fist. The dunes were calm outside the small camp, the wind gently catching Avera's short red hair and the flap of the tent, in which Rasmura was in the process of creating a tiny human from between her legs.

It was always said childbirth would never come at a convenient time, but Avera had found herself in the best case scenario, ironically enough – twisted her ankle during a scouting mission, had to take some time off, and was almost immediately notified the most terrifying woman in the sands was in labor.

Avera had wasted no time in going to support her best friend, limp or no.

Another scream from behind clenched teeth issued out from the tent Avera sat against. Avera had seen Rasmura kicked, stabbed, burned, and thrown around plenty of times, and the woman had barely flinched every time. In fact, her ability to take pain, and promise to return it tenfold, all with a straight face, was often enough to diffuse tense situations. No one wanted to mess with the woman who could play catch with a burning coal and still put you on the floor when it was over.

So the screams Avera was hearing now were something new to her. She'd been sitting against the tent for the past hour, aware she would only get in the way of the child's delivery if she wandered inside. Rasmura had started with low, pained grunts and growls, trying to soldier her way through what was said to be the most intense pain a woman could bear, but over the past hour it had escalated into shrieks, unable to contain herself any longer. Avera prayed it would be over soon, because the suspense was driving her insane.

Plenty of women died in childbirth. Rasmura was the sharpest scimitar west of Hyrule, but that didn't automatically make her an exception to the rule. It would be the most tragic irony if what killed her was not a terrifying monster or a worthy opponent, but the natural process of creating life.

The sun was setting over the dunes, casting the desert in a fiery light. All was calm. Outside the camp at least.

Avera stiffened, her eyes widening, as a new sound issued from within the tent. She turned her head to watch the entrance in case someone came out to collect her, or perhaps they'd forgotten about the crippled soldier leaning against the leather flaps of the mercenary's housing. It was the sound of something tiny, innocent and unfamiliar with the frightening new world of wind and sand. A baby's cry, suddenly the sweetest thing Avera had ever heard. Rasmura's shrieks softened into gasps and sighs.

It was over. Rasmura was okay. Avera flinched as she heard the umbilical cord being severed, but the coos of the women in the tent told her Rasmura's new daughter was perfectly fine as well. Avera tapped her foot on the sand anxiously, waiting for someone to step outside and announce the addition of another Gerudo to the desert. Avera would then go inside, joke about a newborn kicking Rasmura's rear end, take a look at the little girl, hope she would eventually not look like a slimy, screaming prune one day, and tell her she'd be the toughest Gerudo when she grew up, _yes she would._

The voices in the tent ceased almost immediately. Avera's brow furrowed. Something was wrong.

Would it be improper for her to enter the tent now? The child was already in the world; it wasn't as if Avera would be in the way anymore. Then again, Avera had never so much as laid eyes on a man before, so what did she know of childbirth?

A few minutes of this terse silence ensued, broken only by the occasional whisper and the girl's bawling. Several times Avera rose from her spot, only to sink back down into the little pit she'd made with her butt in the sand. She had to know what was going on, but her soldier's instincts had drilled into her that if she was being kept in the dark, there was a reason for it.

Avera was about to step in anyway, every modern rule in Gerudo society be damned, when someone finally came outside, just a little sweaty from her efforts of helping deliver a child. She smiled tiredly at Avera, one of the mercenaries in Rasmura's crew, though her name escaped her.

Avera returned the nervous smile and stood, brushing herself off. "How's the girl?" she asked as casually as she could.

The mercenary hesitated. "Rasmura's fine. Still in some pain, of course, but happy it's over."

"Not that girl," Avera grimaced. She hoped some gentle ribbing would ingratiate her to people of this woman's caliber, but a small, wary part of her warned that if they ran with Rasmura, they had to be mean enough to keep up. "Her daughter. Did everything go okay?"

Another moment of hesitation. Despite the desert heat, Avera felt a chill, and she didn't know where it came from. "Perhaps it's better if you see for yourself," the mercenary replied, turning to go back inside. She paused upon seeing Avera's face lose its color. "It's all right – the child is fine. It's just...not what you expect."

Avera followed the woman inside. Every best and worst case scenario flickered through her mind in a moment. Did her daughter have two heads? Did she immediately bench press the nearest person in a fascinating display of strength? What could shake the toughest women in the desert?

The inside of the tent felt comfortable and stifling all at once after being outside for so long. Numerous Gerudo were gathered around a bed soaked with sweat and numerous other bodily fluids Avera didn't want to study too intently. Lying beneath the bedsheets was Rasmura, her beautiful face covered in perspiration, her arms cradling a baby swathed in a blanket.

Avera saw a lot of things in Rasmura's yellow eyes. The joy of holding her own child in her arms. Fatigue after the most painful thing she'd ever experienced. And then...conflict. Uncertainty. Like for the first time she was looking at a puzzle she couldn't solve. Avera supposed that was natural for a new parent, yet something about Rasmura's expression put her off.

The mercenary looked up at her, and a weary smile brightened her face. "Hey," she croaked. "Glad you could make it. Sorry for the suspense, but this one didn't want to cooperate."

Rasmura's impressive musculature was hidden beneath the blankets, but she never lost the look of someone who could cross the room and remove someone's organ of choice in a heartbeat. In spite of everything the mercenary had gone through, Avera didn't doubt she was still the most dangerous person in the room. Her bushy red hair was sprawled on the pillows behind her, her sharp eyes softened at the crying babe in the blanket. The wolf and the lamb, both at once.

Avera had a list of quotes and greetings she was going to say to lighten the mood, but suddenly none of them felt appropriate anymore. She only put a hand on her hip, her eyes swapping between her old friend and the newborn. "She probably knew I was coming. Didn't want to come out before auntie Avera arrived."

Now Rasmura featured the same hesitation in her face that the mercenary from before had displayed. The girl seemed healthy and Rasmura appeared happy, so it couldn't have been anything too serious, but Avera's heart skipped a beat anyway.

Rasmura extended the crying babe toward Avera. "Here. Extricate the child from the blanket and tell me what you see." Her gaze narrowed, and the merciless warrior replaced the doting mother. "Don't drop my kid."

Avera shook her head, accepting the girl as if they would both explode at the wrong touch. "I won't, I won't." Although Avera had very little idea how to handle a baby. She settled the girl into the crook of her arm, bobbing up and down a little, a trick she'd seen plenty of mothers do to calm their children. She traced a finger down the newborn's face, feeling the tiniest tuft of hair on top. The baby was so small, so helpless. It made Avera in awe of the circle of life.

"Hi there," Avera cooed, smiling at the screaming child. "Did you kick mommy's rear end? Yes you did, yes you did."

Rasmura smiled tiredly, but the look in her eyes told Avera she wanted her to stop filling her daughter's head with nonsense, remove the blanket and see something. Obeying the unspoken request, Avera shifted the blanket to expose the child's nakedness.

She paused. That was definitely not supposed to be there. She understood the concern shared among everyone in the tent now. "There's, uh..." Her eyes were both drawn to it and repulsed at the same time. "There's some kind of growth between your daughter's legs. Not sure what to make of that, but I'm sure it'll be okay."

Rasmura closed her eyes briefly, endlessly patient with her friend. "Um, no, Avera. Try again. What does that look like to you?"

Avera tried again. She swallowed, feeling a bit awkward for staring at a baby's genitalia, but warm, hair-raising familiarity dawned on her. She'd never seen one in person before, though she'd heard numerous descriptions and had seen a handful of crude drawings. Her eyebrows knit together as realization sunk in like a hot knife. "That's a penis. Gods, that's a penis. And these little things below are..."

Rasmura gestured for Avera to draw near again. "All right, I've been away from my boy for too long already. Hand him over."

Her body felt numb as she took a step forward and gingerly placed the baby Gerudo boy into his mother's arms. To any other culture, the birth of a boy was celebrated but otherwise a normal occurrence. To the Gerudo, it meant the paradigm had just shifted, and they were at the crux of it.

The Gerudo were unique. Special. Thanks to whatever act of providence long ago – a god's blessing, a demon's curse, a mere quirk of science, whichever – the Gerudo were exclusively female. When intertwined in love, a Gerudo's genes would dominate her paramour's, and the resulting child would always be a full-blooded Gerudo, with the bronzed skin, red hair, and yellow eyes of her mother. Always female. Not a boy in the entire race.

Though there was one exception: once in a hundred years, so it was said, a boy would be born among the Gerudo. The Boy of Prophecy, destined to eventually lead the Gerudo people and bring relief to the punishing desert. No one knew how or why it happened, but the century had gone by with so few Gerudo noticing, and now, lying screaming in Rasmura's arms, was the future king of the Gerudo people.

That explained the conflict and hesitation within every mercenary's eyes in the camp. The paradigm of the entire culture had shifted, and one way or another, their lives were about to get harder.

Avera slowly started to pace, running her hands down the back of her neck. "So...what's her name? His name, I mean?"

Rasmura sighed. "I don't know. I was planning on naming my daughter Raalari, but this little monkey just made things complicated."

Words poured out of Avera's mouth before she had time to think about them. "How do you even raise a boy? That is the first penis I have ever seen, and now I can't get it out of my head. Gods, I can't get it out of my head. Are you going to have to travel to Hyrule for clothing, or is there a centennial boy's clothing store here I don't know about, or..."

"Avera," Rasmura interrupted gently. "I don't know. But we will figure it out." She nestled her head against the tiny boy's, closing her eyes. "I will not let harm come to my son."

"What do we do?" Avera continued, still pacing. "We can't just keep him a secret."

"We're not going to."

"And the moment the rest of the desert finds out about this, oh girl, there's going to be an uproar, and everyone's going to want to get into the boy's mind."

" _Avera._ " Rasmura glanced back up at the troubled Gerudo. The warrior was back again. "I will not let harm come to my son. I will defend him, and the desert will respect him."

Avera finally stopped her pacing, her eyes naturally falling to the boy's forehead. "I know. I'm just a little startled is all."

"We will figure out the details later. Right now, I'm sore, tired and I need sleep. Gods know I won't be getting any for the next decade at least." She extended the boy back toward Avera. "Keep him safe for me whenever I cannot. Consider today a crash course in raising a boy." She gave her friend a wry smile. "By the way, boys... _project_ when they urinate. Might want to keep that in mind when he inevitably goes."

Avera accepted the child, still feeling like she would explode if she handled him wrong. "All right. I will. Thanks for the warning."

"And don't go too far," Rasmura whispered, closing her eyes. "Please."

Avera smiled weakly. "I won't. I promise."

The boy's life would not be easy. The king of the Gerudo would not be allowed to rest on his laurels and order everyone around him to do as he pleased. He would need to fight, to learn, to never drop his guard lest someone try to take advantage of him. Growing up under his mother, he would learn to be the fiercest warrior of them all.

Rasmura was an expert at putting a lid on her emotions and worrying about tomorrow only when tomorrow came. Avera knew how to put one foot in front of the other, but rarely could she stem the tide of emotions and worries when something new and unusual happened. She was holding the Boy of Prophecy in her arms, and her mind still had trouble accepting that.

The logic, in itself, was simple: whoever had the Boy of Prophecy's ear controlled the entire desert. In a bid to quell insurrections and infighting, Gerudo law now mandated that the Boy of Prophecy be raised in the capital, Mirage, and would officially become king at age sixteen. It seemed to work; after the law was enacted, Boys of Prophecy would treat their status as a solemn duty and less of a prideful privilege, and rather than risk the ire of the law, the Gerudo reduced the number of outright assassinations and kidnappings in an effort to seize control of the boy, and therefore the desert.

Avera's eyes scanned her old friend's quiet, tired form, rising and falling with the expansion of her lungs. They'd first met seven years ago, when Avera was a fourteen-year-old stable hand still undergoing Gerudo training and Rasmura, eighteen, was already a hardened warrior. Avera had no love of violence but sought to protect her friends and family to the best of her ability, leading her to enlist in the Gerudo army, starting by caring for the horses of soldiers far more experienced than her. Despite her low status, she took pride in her work.

She'd often bumped into Rasmura at the stable, who had joined two short years prior and quickly proven her ruthless efficiency in combat, rising through the ranks. Something about Rasmura's unwavering confidence and lack of concern for how she was viewed resonated with Avera, telling her she'd found the person she wanted to imitate. Something about Avera's down-to-earth innocence and sobriety resonated with Rasmura, a window into a smaller, more orderly world from the one Rasmura had come from.

Though their bond was always strong, there were differences between them that couldn't be ignored. Avera kept her head down and stayed out of trouble. Rasmura could incite everyone in the room with a mere word, and often did. She broke rules. She espoused unpopular opinions. She killed targets she was only supposed to capture and looted nearby Hylian merchants because the Gerudo needed the goods more, in her opinion. The last part had gotten her dismissed from the military, and her reputation as a dangerous renegade had begun to spread.

A reputation the boy in Avera's arms was about to inherit.

The boy continued to wail. If he thought existing outside the womb was difficult now, he would be in for a shock later in life. Probably not too much later.

" _Shh,_ " Avera whispered, huddling closer to the boy. "We'll take care of you. We'll get it figured out. Mommy's tough and so is auntie Avera. _Shh._ "


End file.
